"Hi there. I'm Jeff Haagenstad, the former CEO of the audio company Exogal. This is our obituary. It's true. As a company, we're dead. How did we die? In kind of a tragic and uniquely Pandemic way. Nearly two years ago we were all ready to build our Perseid all-in-one integrated product; and the Perseus family designed to replace the Comet and Ion. Most companies like ours have credit lines. Credit lines are the life blood of small manufacturers. They're difficult to get and difficult to keep active. These credit lines allow us to buy parts, build stuff, sell it and pay back the line. It's like a revolving charge account at a department store.
So we borrowed. We bought parts. And we got every necessary part except for one. Without that one part for which there was no substitute, we couldn't build or ship any of these products. That one part is used in a lot of the other high-tech things that are also in short supply even two years into a supply chain crisis. Cars, appliances, stuff like that. So we had borrowed the money but still couldn't build the products. No products equals no cash flow equals not paying back the loan or paying the bills. Eventually the lender got frustrated and repossessed the parts.
The founders of Exogal had been covering our operating expenses out of our own pockets thinking "there's no way this can last for 2 years!" Boy were we wrong. Eventually we were all personally tapped out and unable to continue paying the rent and utilities on our office space. We were evicted. We owe people money. I get yelled at a lot. So now we have no products or place to work. That makes it pretty hard to have a company. At this point it's impossible for us to continue as an operating company. Our building has been closed, our stuff has either been repossessed or auctioned off. Exogal no longer stalks the Earth.
I will say that there are a few customers who had issues in the process and we'll do our best to handle those so no one is left hanging – but I can't guarantee that I can keep the final promises we've made. The end came quickly when it came. Certainly we knew it was likely coming but we thought we could pull off a miracle at the end and that just didn't happen. Even though we are no longer an operating entity, we do have all of our intellectual property, all of our code, all of our designs and design files, everything we would need to reconstitute the company if someone wanted to fund the effort or purchase those assets.
So before I say "goodbye", I'll just say if there is an entity that wants to buy Exogal's IP, I can be reached at jeff @ haagenstad.com. We've enjoyed doing this and we think we made a difference in the industry. The headwinds we faced over the last couple of years were too much and they sank us. We want to say thanks for the opportunity to try this, thanks for supporting us and thanks for understanding my all-too-brief explanation of how and why we died. Hopefully we'll see you around from time to time!
Thank you and goodbye."
